yi yi yi as of D-Day anniversay

As a coworker used to say, this should make you pucker up: impending war, with nukes at play.

HT to instapundit.

Bennett and Matheson

They say Bennett wasn't conservative enough. But it's not a matter of votes; it's a matter of what Republicans have gotten done.

Utah Republicans would like to vote against Orrin Hatch, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and almost all the rest.

That Republicans hold conservative views, but then collaborate with Democrats, that's what drives them wild.

The vote on the bank bailout? They don' care if Bennett voted for half of it or one dollar of it or was just in the room. They aren't rejecting just Bob Bennett; they are rejecting the whole "establishment" GOP, that talks a good came but either cuts a deal with the Democrats or gets hornswoggled by them.

Bennett talked about his experience. But GOP core rejects that experience. He talks about reaching across the aisle. Well, every time they do that, they get their watches stolen, then get punched in the mouth. Democrats laugh all the way home.

And how to you reach out to radicals? Jim Matheson is getting schooled too. A cautious vote against ObamaCare has gotten a perfect personification of Dem special interests to run against him.

Democrats don't want him. And I don't mean that in a negative sense. They want to get rid of him.

For there is no middle ground. The differences are too great, the stakes too high.

For Democrats want to destroy conservatism. That's why the slurs, the union thugs, the vicious rhetoric from the White House on down.

Maybe Bob Bennett is too nice for this game. And, though he's in fine fettle, at 76 he just doesn't have it.

But, by the way, the tea party crowd doesn't want to be a third party. They want to be the conservative party. They want to take over the Republican Party, or else gut it and form a new one. A Conservative Party, a Patriot Party, what.

They're just done with the Republican Party.

Can it cope with that and the end of Reganism too?

Fixing the bill?

From Kausfiles:

I still haven't heard a convincing argument against the Sudden Victory strategy (in which the House passes the Senate health care bill, fixes it later). ... President Clinton endorsed (and signed) the 1996 welfare reform while pledging to correct its excesses (notably its harsh treatment of legal immigrants). .... in fact Clinton was largely successful in going back and fixing the problems he identified, if I remember. ...

Rejoinder:
1. Basically, that bill was wildly popular. The health bill no longer is.
2. The welfare bill needed minor tweaks. This needs big ones.
3. The welfare bill was relatively simple, thus easy to fix. The health bill is very complex. It can't be fixed.
4. Clinton and old-line Dems were competent. Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Coakley (that’s right, diss Catholics, truck owners and Red Sox fans in Massachusetts!) are incompetent.

Behind closed doors

From Kausfiles:

Real legislative deals are always most efficiently cut behind closed doors, where the principals can be candid and concession-minded without fear of embarrassment, and where they can't grandstand. ... That's life. It's not like we don't know what the issues are, or that we won't find out how they've been resolved ....If the Dems let C-SPAN cover the negotiations they'd just have to find another room nearby in which to hold the real negotiations first. ...

Objections:

1. But traditional deliberations are not ENTIRELY behind closed doors. There are public hearings. Mostly they are window dressing, conceded. But in this case? There aren't even conference hearings. Those might be very informative this time. They'd likely add fuel to this debate.

If everything is really done behind closed doors, as cynics say, OK. Let's sell the Capitol then, and have everything behind closed doors. Rent some smoke-filled rooms. No tobacco smoke -- horrors! -- but gently waft some incense in.

2. Previous closed door meetings were at least between the majority and minority. This is just the majority, and even then only a small clique.

3. This isn't about bridges in Alabama and North Dakota. This is about my health care. I want to hear it.

4. So what if it's previously been done in a smoked filled rooms? As the old saying goes, the people have watched this sausage being made so far, and they're about to puke.

5. And O only won because he promised to do something new. OK, do something new.

6. If they can't keep this one promise, why should we believe anything else?

Liberal pundit rips health tax

From the N.Y. Times:

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care.

Journalists and objectivity?

Maybe this explains why bloggers do better than established pundits:

But experiments rarely tell us what we think they’re going to tell us. That’s the dirty secret of science.

Democrats destroy party

Democrats seem to think their health-insurance overhaul will be a crowning achievement; instead, it will be the death of the party -- insofar as has been the protector of the little guy.

For that is how it has always seen itself. The party's roots go back to Thomas Jefferson, who inveighed against both the federal government and the money men who always seem to swarm around the federal funds, as in the Bank of the United States (the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac of its day).

His successors continued the tradition. The party took its modern form with Andrew Jackson. Whether it was letting the muddy-booted masses into the White House to celebrate his inauguration, or killing the second version of the Bank of the United States, he made his mark as a champion of the common man.

Our discussion is not about whether their policies were consistent, or in the long run actually helped average Americans. Also left out is the reality that the party became the defender of slavery. What we are talking about is the political and psychological image of the party in the public mind.

That continued after the Civil War, with William Jennings Bryan its emotional leader. But mere opposition must have begun to seem frustrating as the corporations only grew bigger and the rich seemed to grow richer. Under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party no longer sought merely to oppose the concentration of power in Washington and Wall Street, but to take over Washington and dominate Wall Street. Whatever their successes and failures, they at least seemed to be taking the side of the average person.

And that's what average people seek. This may come as a shock to Big Business, but a great host of people don't trust the big corporations. That's why people want an ally. They are under no misconception, in most cases, that the Democratic Party is a perfect ally. But for decades it seemed to be the only ally they had.

That's why the current battle for nationalized health care could mark a serious turning point for the party. WhenBarack Obama took office, most people thought that Democrats would take their side against the big insurance andpharmaceutical companies — and probably the hospitals and doctors, too.

But the battle over the 2,000-plus insurance bills has revealed that, far from being allies of the people, the Democrats have become allies of the big corporations and the elite.

In June, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America cut an infamous backroom deal with the White House and Senate Democrats. The companies vowed to hand over $80 billion in lower drug costs over the next decade and also pony up for a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign to back the Democratic plans. The payoff: The legislation would take it easy on Big Pharma. The longer-term picture: The drug companies get more customers and less competition as government control stifles innovation.

As for Big Insurance, they too sold out. The big firms have already agreed to stop denying coverage to the sick and charging people higher premiums because of their gender or health status. What's in it for them? The mandate: ObamaCare will force Americans to carry health insurance, i.e., be customers, while driving smaller companies out of that business.

Those are just the big guys. Other industries and special interests did all they could to buy off the Democrats.

As the Journal has pointed out, they are finding out that the Democrats may be stabbing them in the back. However, that just shows the truth of the old adage that an honest politician is one that stays bought, and there aren't many in Washington who meet even that low standard.

Nevertheless, ObamaCare changes the psychology of the Democratic Party. It will no longer be a partner of theAmerican people; it will be a partner of business and the professional elites. The Democratic party may be thesenior partner, but it will be a partner nevertheless of the ruling establishment of our day. Allied with the establishment, the Democrats will be invariably drawn every tighter with the corporations and special interests they once fought.

That's just the broad view of the health-insurance bills. In a host of ways, they take power from the people and give it to elites: bureaucrats, businesses, and Washington power players.

If Democrats pass ObamaCare, they will be abandoning the American people. The people will know. They will turn then to who best seems to play the role of Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan or FDR. When that happens, historians will look back and see 2009 as the time the Democratic party turned its back for good on its heritage — and the American people.